


Your Own Bold Approach

by wafflelate



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Anbu missions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Single-Tag Barrier Seals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 06:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18845290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate
Summary: When she’d joined ANBU, Crow-taichō had said to her, very seriously, “On Circle Team, we do things by the book.” But it’s been awhile since then, and Groundhog still isn’t sure exactly which playbook Circle Team is actually using.





	Your Own Bold Approach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BoPeepWithNoSheep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoPeepWithNoSheep/gifts).



> This takes place in right around when Shikako was going through her ANBU bootcamp experience.

In November, Circle Team is given the Nara single-tag barrier seals, while the whole of ANBU is still abuzz with rumors of the last Uchiha and the Jōnin Commander’s daughter defeating the Sanbi at the Mist exams. Their team has a mission to Land of Mountains, following up on intel about strange happenings there and rumors of Konoha missing-nin in the area. When they stop to collect better cold weather gear Kawauso lays down four stacks of six seals each and explains their basic functions. Then he tells the members of Circle Team, “These have been tested extensively for use by the General Forces, but not by ANBU. You’re the first to take them out into the field.” 

New seals aren’t the kind of thing they expect when Kawauso changes their standard loadout. Improved ninja wire, specialized explosives, even new poison formulations, but _new seals?_ They all grab their respective stacks curiously. Well, Groundhog grabs _her_ stack curiously; she can’t say exactly whether Lamb, Goose, or Crow-taichō are also curious. 

Crow-taichō turns one of the seals over, inspecting the back of it. “I don’t like taking along unfamiliar equipment.” 

Their captain has lead Circle Team since before Groundhog joined ANBU, and was probably ANBU before Groundhog was even born — so she wonders if he’d been serving when Namikaze Minato was alive, which was probably the last time new seals were distributed before the NaraTen seals were introduced to the village. Maybe it’s weird to be reminded of that time, of the strange hope and energy the Yondaime had apparently brought to the village before burning out. 

“You could pick them up when you get back,” Kawauso says, “but Hokage-sama allocated extra funds to rushing the production of the seals so that every team could have them as soon as possible.” 

Unable to help herself, Groundhog announces “I want to take them.” 

She doesn’t remember the Fourth; she just knows that the Fifth has their best interests in mind. She glances at Crow-taichō and finds him watching her, though, so she feels like she has to justify herself: “Those new storage seals work _great_. These are probably super useful.” 

Lamb sniffs. “The release of the NaraTen seals was an unprofessional mess.” 

Groundhog is pretty sure Lamb had a close relative involved in the NaraTen debacle. Also, he’s a stickler for coloring inside the lines and hates change. It’s probably hard to be that way. 

“ _Don’t_ have this fight again,” Goose hisses. 

Careful to sound as innocent as possible, as if she would never _dream_ of squabbling with Lamb about _anything_ , Groundhog asks Goose, “What fight?” 

She can’t see Goose’s expression, but she can _feel_ how offended he is. He’s great — not as fun or easy to wind up as Lamb, but less likely to take it personally. 

Crow-taichō doesn’t say anything or react in any way to their squabbling. He just tucks the seals away with the rest of his equipment and moves on to selecting insulated cloaks and specialized sleeping bags for them with Kawauso. That decides the matter without need for further discussion; Groundhog puts her stack of seals away and so do her teammates. Lamb will probably complain later, but they’ll all probably ignore his complaining, so that’s fine. 

What’s important right now is inching forward to butt into Crow-taichō’s conversation with Kawauso because they’re both great, really, she trusts them a lot, but they have _no idea_ about outfit coordination for civilian clothes and Groundhog is going to be the one who has to wear them like she owns them, so she needs to have a say. 

“This is the color of puke,” she says about one scarf. “This is the _texture_ of puke,” she says about a particularly misshapen sweater. Everyone in the room has done this dance with her before, so she gets to sort out her clothing choices in peace and then pack them away into an extremely efficient NaraTen seal. Her favorite selection this time around is the mittens she scored, which she’s going to wear every single day. 

“Happy hunting,” Kawauso says as they leave, still noting down exactly which items Groundhog had selected. 

Circle Team exits the village and heads north, angled west so that they’ll enter Land of Mountains well clear of its border with Land of Rice Fields. Groundhog’s fingers itch to pull the barrier seals out and test them, but Crow-taichō sets a hard pace. They languish in her kunai pouch instead, tempting but forbidden. 

It’s days and days of searching. Groundhog is the one to henge into a civilian look most often and talk to the locals — goat herders and shepherds, miners and their brusque wives. Groundhog likes these people, likes learning to blend in with them, likes carrying news from one community to the next. Likes getting to pat the sheep, skirt around the goats, and learn the little quirks of the local language. 

She could never, _would never_ , do long term infiltration work again, but this isn’t so bad. She has Crow-taichō’s eyes on her at all times, because Crow-taichō is a tired-looking Hyūga old enough to be her dad who never _says_ he’s going to be looking out for her but who definitely, definitely is. He’s a safety net, an assurance, and every time she returns to the group with more information her heart maybe soars a little in response to his quick, approving nod. 

It’s not that she _needs_ his approval. It’s just that it’s nice. She appreciates it. She also appreciates that he makes time for her unnecessary favors for these people — for example when she comes back from talking to yet another shepard and reports in that he’s _definitely_ seen ninja at the local inn that match the men they’re looking for. 

She says, “Ah, there’s one more thing, taichō...” and waves one of her mitted hands at him. It’s hard to see around the mitten, but a hastily folded piece of paper is clutched there, a precious and haphazard note. 

Lamb says, “ _No_.” 

Goose groans. 

But taichō — he just tilts his head, considering. “Another shopping list?” he asks. 

Yes, she’d convinced him to let her run into town on behalf of a harried mother the day before to pick up necessities. _Yes_ , she’d even picked up a few toys for the kids. _It’s good cover_ , she’d said while they waited for enough time to pass for her to go back and give the stuff to the mom, spinning a pinwheel with an idle twist of wind chakra. 

“Ah, this time... I think it’s a love letter,” Groundhog says. 

Goose laughs, a barking, rough thing carefully muffled not to carry but otherwise clearly uncontrollable. 

“He seemed _really_ sad,” Groundhog protests. “And he won’t see her until shearing season, which is pretty much _forever_ away, you know.” 

“You’re a disaster,” Goose says, but he pats her on the shoulder to take the sting out of it. 

“This mission will be a disaster if we keep playing messenger for the locals,” Lamb complains, and he does nothing to take the sting out of it. 

It’s not like Groundhog _couldn’t_ turn the errands and side jobs and requests for favors down. It’s not like — _if_ taichō orders her — she won’t destroy the letter. But what would be the point of that? And anyway, she blends in better with the locals if she does what locals would do, and what locals would do is go a little out of their way for each other. There’s no other way to survive in Land of Mountains. Or so she’s heard. 

She keeps her eyes on Crow-taichō. “It’s in the area, and I’m pretty sure Amazawa Shōtei is the only person in the area who could even _afford_ to employ a ninja, much less several. Though they _could_ have been hired to do something to him instead of being hired by him to do something to someone else.” 

“Then I guess we’re playing messenger,” Crow-taichō says, but she thinks from the set of his shoulders that he might have agreed to let her do it even if it _wasn’t_ useful. 

On the way, she goes into a little more detail about the layout of the property Amazawa Shōtei owns, because she’d wheedled a lot of information out of the shepherd. There’s a large house for the Amazawa family and a small, live-in staff; some pasture with shearing sheds and shelters; a textile mill for processing the wool that comes off the sheep; and a scattering of housing options for the workers who oscillate between being employed with the lower-elevation crop farms and being employed by Amazawa and the local animal farmers. The textile mill is still in the middle of processing all of the wool sheared from carpet wool sheep in the spring and the fall, so the factory is in full swing when they arrive. Hikoboshi the shepard had been _incredibly_ chatty, a quality Groundhog really enjoys and appreciates. 

The Hokage hadn’t indicated that they should be _especially_ secretive about being in the area, but it doesn’t pay to be sloppy, so they delay Groundhog’s letter delivery for approximately the amount of time it would take for the out-of-town civilian tourist Groundhog had been pretending to be to make her way there by scouting the grounds. 

They find some small signs of ninja activity: scuffed walls, footprints on the roof, sloppy crap that you’d expect from shitty traitors who couldn’t hack it as low-level Konoha chūnin and who have grown lazy and comfortable in a remote locale. It kind of pisses all of them off, although they don’t talk about it. 

There’s only so many times you can call people who abandon the village scum before it becomes too repetitive to bother. 

When the time comes, Groundhog approaches the well-appointed house on foot, for all the world looking like a healthy civilian hiker, tightly bundled against the harsh November wind rushing up from the valley below. 

It’s much too late to be a leaf-watching tourist — those actually exist, people who plan visits around autumn foliage — so Groundhog’s cover story has been that her mother had been from this area and she’s on a quest to find her local relatives. It works great because everyone’s very sympathetic and tries to be helpful, struggling to remember the name of so-and-so’s sister who moved to the city decades ago, never to be heard from again. Most of her appearance is a clever construct of chakra, but the outer layer is all real, care-worn ANBU issue civilian clothing, because nothing is more annoying than screwing up an undercover job because you couldn’t convincingly remove your coat and mittens for the kindly rural grandma who’s inviting you in for tea. 

There’s no obvious security around the Amazawa property on Groundhog’s approach — maybe none at all, which drives Groundhog crazy — so she’s able to proceed to the door of Amazawa’s house without pause and knock firmly. 

A maid opens the door and pauses significantly, looking her up and down like she might be something dangerous until Groundhog gives a slightly dramatic shiver and widens her eyes like a genin, at which point the suspicion fades into confusion and sympathy. “Lost, hun?” the maid asks, opening the door a little wider. A wave of warm air billows from the open door. 

_Lost_ is an excuse Groundhog has been using a lot on this mission, because there’s no other good reason to be a civilian wandering around some of the extremely remote areas of the Land of Mountains highlands in November, but in this case the shepherd hadn’t been very far out at all so — “No, no, just on an errand,” Groundhog says, with the most winning smile she can manage both on her real face and on her illusory face. People can hear it in your voice if you don’t actually smile. “I’m Kikuko, so nice to meet you, I’ve got a note for Amazawa Orihime from Hikoboshi? I was told I could find her here.” 

“Yes, you’ve got the right house,” the maid says. She holds out her hand. “I can...?” 

Actually, _this_ is the kind of thing that drives Groundhog wild about civilians, even more than their complete lack of security. What kind of irresponsible moron gives a message to anyone besides its intended recipient? 

“Aw, gosh, I carried it all this way,” Groundhog says. “And it’s chilly out here! Couldn’t I come in and give it to her?” 

“Well... I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm,” the maid says, and opens the door wide enough to let Groundhog slip inside. “Come this way.” 

The house is beautiful and warm. Groundhog briefly wipes her boots on the mat in front of the door, dislodging some but not all of the muck and debris. Then she takes her mittens off, but she isn’t given the chance to take her coat off — probably because she’s not going to be invited to stay for any amount of time. Rich civilians have no manners. 

The maid leads Groundhog through several formal, well-appointed rooms and down a long hallway. As they approach the room at the end of the hall, the hairs on the back of Groundhog’s neck rise. Her stomach twists with sudden nerves. It’s hard to keep her eyes from darting along the length of the corridor looking for traps, hard to keep from twisting to look behind her for enemies. There’s no one else in the hall, but... 

“Here we are,” the maid says. 

She opens the door and stands well to the side. She doesn’t announce Groundhog to her employer. 

She’d also allowed Groundhog to come in the front door instead of going around to whichever entrance servants and delivery people usually use. And she hadn’t seemed to care about Groundhog’s haphazard use of the boot mat, either. And her footsteps hadn’t made any sound as Groundhog had followed her down the hall. 

Someone inside the room throws a kunai with an exploding note attached. 

The house is sturdy lumber and frame construction, old enough that it might be lathe and plaster walls. There are no windows. There’s no time for a jutsu. 

Groundhog whips her hand to her pouch, grabs the first piece of seal paper her fingers land on, and slaps it up into the air while tucking herself down to the floor, uncertain what kind of barrier she’s grabbed and not sure what happens if she’s standing at full height while trying to use the dome seal. 

The kunai hits the barrier. The exploding note explodes, as is typical, rattling the house and definitely setting some portion of it on fire. When Groundhog untucks and looks up, she sees that she’d picked a flat wall barrier. It spans the hall, angled just a little upwards. It directed the force of the blast back at the maid and the room the kunai had been thrown from. 

Groundhog deactivates the barrier and steps forward into the smoldering room. The roof is almost completely gone and there’s no sign of the maid or whoever had thrown the kunai — but in the distance, from the factory, there’s the sounds of civilians shouting and yelling, and below that ruckus the sound of a fight. Groundhog exists the house through the new convenient hole created via enemy action and finds Crow-taichō and Lamb fighting the maid while Goose goes after a young woman who more or less looks the way Hikoboshi the shepherd had described Orihime, although Groundhog is sure that Hikoboshi hadn’t imagined his lovely Orihime holding kunai in a fight to the death. 

Goose lands a solid blow and the henge over Orihime bursts open in a mess cloud of chakra smoke, revealing a man in his early thirties, a missing nin of some kind, although he hasn’t done them the courtesy of wearing his hitai-ate still to make identifying him easy. 

Both fights are over before Groundhog can even join in. The maid — apparently genuinely a kunoichi, because she hadn’t had a henge break during the fight — is dead on the ground. Goose’s opponent is unconscious and tightly bound. He hauls the man over one shoulder and Lamb seals the dead kunoichi into a body scroll and then Circle Team fades from sight before the civilians can reach them, retreating to the top of the textile mill to watch 

Groundhog realizes on the way over to the roof of the textile mill that she lost Hikoboshi’s note for Orihime at some point while trying not to be blown up. She’s also got her ANBU-issue hand-knit mittens clutched in one hand, strangling the life out of them. It’s been a long time since she had a close call like that — and she feels so _stupid_ for missing the obvious signs that the maid was a kunoichi. She’s not even sure what gave her away (Had the kunoichi been a sensor?) and now it’s probably too late to find out. 

Even worse, the moment they’re settled in to watch the fallout and assess the likelihood of more ninja being present, Lamb turns to her and says, “Well, next time maybe we should skip the errands, hm?” 

And yet, paradoxically, being questioned like that actually makes her feel better. It’s... _normal_ , and she has a normal reply flying off the tip of her tongue before she can even stop to think. “Hey, I found the ninja, didn’t I?” she shoots back. “Don’t get mad just because you were dead weight in that fight and Crow-taichō had to do all the work.” 

“Like _you_ did much—” 

“ _I_ was performing my very important job of not getting blown up by evil house staff.” Which is actually a job she’s had more frequently than Lamb would probably guess, because there’s no way anyone’s ever sent _Lamb_ undercover. 

“I recognize this guy,” Goose says, talking over Lamb’s reply. He nudges the unconscious ninja he’d unceremoniously dumped at their feet when they came to a standstill. “Well, his face is all different, and kind of fucked up, but his smell, you know?” 

There’s an awkward pause where the three of them reflect that they _don’t_ know, because if their captive has any B.O. it’s being whisked away nice and quick by the wind, and even if they could smell him, none of them are scent trackers the way Goose is. 

Crow-taichō is the one to ask who the guy is. 

“I don’t remember his family name, if he had one, but his first name is definitely Kashima.” Goose rubs the back of his head. “We went to the Academy together. I never forget a scent.” 

That’s not any of the names they were actually looking for, but Crow-taichō shrugs. “Back to the borderpost, then,” he says. No ANBU team drags a prisoner around if they don’t have to, and an ANBU team on a mission like this is basically expected to drop in with prisoners. 

They head south. When she and her captain have a fraction of a moment alone, his hand comes up — hesitates — and then lands on her shoulder. It doesn’t feel warm like she always thought it would be, or pleasantly heavy and grounding. In fact, she can barely feel it though his gloves and and her own thick cloak. It’s a light, unrestrictive touch, designed to comfort but not trap. 

“I’m glad we brought the barrier seals along,” Crow-taichō says. “We’ll all practice with them soon.” 

Not that “soon” actually means “soon”. Even though November is creeping to a close by the time they make their way back to the border post, Circle Team’s mission has no set end date as long as their targets are still thought to be somewhere in Land of Mountains, assuming no one on the team becomes too injured to continue. Groundhog’s heard that the team hunting Rokushō Aoi had spent fourteen months haunting the borders of Rain, waiting for a chance to take him out and recover the Sword of the Thunder God before the Sandaime had decided not to risk setting off a war with Hanzo the Salamander. 

Practice will have to wait until they’re back in the village. 

At the border post, Crow brings an unconscious Kashima to the outpost commander, who turns around and delivers Kashima to the interrogation specialists assigned to the border. 

The interrogators didn’t get anything out of Kashima — which Lamb complains about bitterly because he’s the one who had to crouch unobtrusively on the ceiling for days and days, waiting for them to coax something useful out of Kashima — so Team Circle is on its own. They cross the border into Land of Mountains again to comb the countryside and avoid the locals, who’ve suddenly become more xenophobic. 

Groundhog thinks often of Hikoboshi’s love letter and the missing Amazawa Orihime, but though they’d passed that information on to the village, it’s unlikely that Konoha will do anything about it. In the scheme of things it’s small, almost meaningless, and even if she’d never been possibly-kidnapped-probably-killed, the daughter of a textile baron probably wasn’t really in the cards for Hikoboshi anyway. 

There are other concerns, of course. Staying warm and dry. Concentrating as they traipse lightly across snow, leaving no footprints. Looking and looking and looking for Kumamoto Uto and Tsugaru Takaoka, who are their actual mission objective. Snow hits the mountain hard as November turns to December and the year fades. It makes tracks easier to follow and incongruous movements easier to spot, as the whole countryside hunkers down under the weight of the first blizzard and everything slows down in Land of Mountains. 

One morning Crow-taichō calls a halt in the saddle of one of the mountains and then leads them almost straight up the shoulder. It’s a brutal path but, at least, too steep to have snow sitting on it, leading to easier footing as their feet can make contact directly with stone and stick to it instead of trying to support layers of snow and ice while simultaneously trying to wall climb. After a few minutes, what their captain saw with his Byakugan comes into view. 

There’s a body hanging from the overhanging cliff above them, suspended and bound with chain and ninja wire thirty feet above the thin, sloping ledge they come to rest on. The corpse twists slowly in the wind, just sheltered enough from the elements and predators here to be mostly whole. 

Goose asks, “Is that Tsugaru’s shoge?” 

The chain does definitely have a circle of metal at one end, the way a kyoketsu-shoge should. That’s what’s hooked around something — a kunai? — driven into the top of the cliff, letting the body dangle and twist. There’s no sign of the blade at the other end, but it might be hidden under the gratuitous ninja wire. 

Crow-taichō, who can probably see the shoge’s blade, shugs. “It’s _someone’s_ shoge. Groundhog, figure out if that’s Tsugaru. Lamb, search the area. Goose, we’ll scout farther out.” 

Goose and Crow-taichō leave. Lamb produces an evidence tarp — a thick waterproof length of canvas with a storage seal on one side. He spreads it out on the ground while Groundhog frowns up at the body she’s supposed to be identifying. 

The body is too far away from the wall of the cliff for wall-walking to be a good idea, especially because every so often a gust of wind catches the body just right to whip it against the cliff and Groundhog would prefer _not_ to get bludgeoned by a corpse today or, preferably, ever again. Going to the top of the cliff and trying to lift the ring off the kunai or pry the kunai off of the ring would also be a terrible idea; Groundhog doubts she’d physically be able to do it, and even if she could she’d probably immediately drop the body several stories to a face-obliterating landing. Besides, the top of the cliff doesn’t really look _stable_. Crow-taichō wouldn’t want her to drop boulders on Lamb. Probably. 

What she needs is scaffolding. Or at least a ladder. Or something. 

“Do you know that earth jutsu that makes a rock pillar?” she asks Lamb. 

Lamb looks at her for a solid thirty seconds and then back to his own work. Lamb does not know that jutsu. Back to the drawing board. 

Groundhog takes out the wall seal that had saved her life weeks ago and considers it. Maybe it’s not a _good_ idea, but it certainly can’t be a _worse_ idea than climbing up to the top of the cliff and trying to skitter down the length of the chain while it’s swung this way and that by the wind. Also, if it works, it will be _so_ cool. 

She takes a running start along the ledge, breezing past Lamb, and performs a quick aerial cartwheel, triggering the wall seal at the apex to lay the barrier down flat a few feet above the ground and landing neatly on the other side of it. 

The barrier doesn’t _look_ solid, but when she hops up onto it, it holds her weight. It’s kind of slippery, like wet tile, but she jumps up and down on it a few times without incident. She pulls out another seal, and this time — now that she knows she can land on them — she just jumps up and activates the barrier where she wants to land. 

The barriers definitely weren’t made for this, of course. Groundhog finds that they’re almost impossible to stick to like she would to anything else, so if she accidentally lays a barrier at too much of an angle she’ll slip right off. She also only has a handful of flat barrier seals, so every once in awhile she has pause to turn and reclaim spend seals, a delicate process that means cancelling the seal and then snagging the slip of paper it’s written on out of midair with a shaky chakra string before it can be whisked away by the high-altitude mountain air. 

She’s already halfway to eye level with the corpse when Lamb finally notices. 

“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.” His mask is looking up at her, blank and unreadable, but Groundhog can hear the scowl in his voice. 

Groundhog shrugs, although from this angle he probably can’t tell. “No one said we _shouldn’t_ ,” she points out, for the sake of clear communication. 

“It wasn’t in the instructions that Kawauso gave us,” Lamb says. “You’re taking unnecessary risks. Again.” 

“It’s _fine_.” Groundhog turns away from him, jumps, lays down another seal, then turns to deactivate the other two seals, careful to attach chakra seals to them before deactivating them and also _extremely_ careful not to deactivate the seal for the barrier she’s standing on. No one would be impressed by her breaking an ankle. 

“Taichō won’t be happy,” Lamb says. 

Lamb is her senpai, technically, so Groundhog doesn’t tell him what she thinks of _that_ , but she does laugh at him on her way up and up and up. When she reaches the top she uses one of her seals to stand on and the other two to block some of the wind. It’s not perfect — it’s actually fairly precarious — but it does mean she can get her job done. 

When Crow-taichō gets back, he just waits patiently for her to descend more or less the way she came with the corpse tucked away into a body scroll. “Innovative,” he says when she hits the ground. The kyoketsu-shoge chain, sans blade, dances in the wind above them, banging against the cliff like a whip. 

“Thanks, taichō,” Groundhog says, and pointedly doesn’t glance at Lamb or anything. She just turns the body scroll over and reports briefly on her findings — that the body was Tsugaru Takaoka, or at least it’s a facsimile so close as to be indistinguishable in the field, and that if Kumamoto Uto killed him they’re less than a week behind him and he’s probably injured — so that their hunt can recommence. 

Kumamoto proves easy to track down. Tsugaru was probably the brains of the operation, or else murdering his partner managed to make Kumamoto finally lose his edge, but either way they corner and kill him six days later and it feels more like putting an animal out of its misery than anything else. Groundhog is mildly disgusted by it, but ANBU isn’t generally interested in live capture missions and she’d known that going in. 

The trip back to the village is quiet. Not exactly tense, but weeks and weeks with the same people doesn’t leave much to be talked about. Even harassing Lamb has lost most of its shine — he’s still annoyingly particular and uncomfortably opinionated about the smallest, most meaningless things, but he’s doing it _quietly_ , so Groundhog returns the favor. This is usually the part of the mission where Crow-taichō finally starts picking up the conversational slack and tells mission stories to help them all decompress before they even hit the village gates, but this time he’s just as silent as the rest of them. 

After they report to the Godaime, Lamb and Goose take off right away, headed for changing stations so that they can unmask and get back to their life in the village. Groundhog doesn’t have much of one of those, though, and she and Crow-taichō do have stuff to return to Kawauso, anyway. Technically the captain is responsible for any and all additional equipment requisitioned for their mission, but Groundhog is the one who used all of the civilian clothes, so it’s just better if she goes along. 

There’s a big book of equipment records to fill out, one line for each piece of clothing. Groundhog dithers over it — especially over the snowflake-patterned mittens that had served her so well — and ultimately decides that no one but her _really_ knows that they didn’t get completely exploded along with a large portion of Amazawa Shōtei’s house. She secrets them away into her pack while Crow-taichō tells Kawauso that he thinks the single-tag barrier seals are the best equipment they’ve ever been outfitted with. 

She expects to split from Crow-taichō there, because he probably has ANBU veteran-y things to do and Groundhog’s bed is kind of calling to her, seductively, from across the village... but Crow-taichō asks her to step into one of the private meeting rooms, the kind where the more dramatic members of ANBU have their interpersonal conflicts. 

Groundhog hopes _she’s_ not about to have an interpersonal conflict, and can’t deny that she’s nervous when the door closes behind them, cutting their conversation off from the rest of HQ. 

“Taichō, if this is about the mittens,” she says, pulling them out of her bag and waving them in the air between them like maybe he’s forgotten what mittens are or something, “then I can just give them back to Kawauso right now. I mean. I was going to turn over a pair of _my_ old mittens, so no one would go mitten-less just because I think these are cuter, but—” 

“I don’t care about the mittens,” Crow-taichō says, and then he removes his mask. 

Which pretty much makes Groundhog want to leap out of her own skin, because it _does_ kind of feel like the crow mask _is_ Crow-taichō’s face, and it’s always weird to see him without it. 

“Uh,” Groundhog says, scrambling to pick up at least one brain cell and put it back to work. Crow is going masks-off for this, so should she? She reaches up for her own mask. 

“You don’t have to,” Crow-taichō says, quickly, before she can pull it off. “You never _have_ to. I just wanted...” He trails off and doesn’t finish the thought. 

While Crow-taichō gathers his thoughts, Groundhog takes her mask off. This is clearly a personal conversation, not a professional one, so leaving her ANBU mask on will just make things lopsided and weird when the situation really doesn’t need _extra_ weirdness. It’s not like she needs to hide anything from Crow-taichō — he knows who she is under her mask. 

When she’s tucked her mask against her side and the cool air of the ANBU tunnels is brushing her face in a way that feels weird after more than a month of being masks-on, Crow-taichō says, “Groundhog, you’ve been an excellent member of Circle Team—” 

“—are you kicking me off the team?” Groundhog interrupts, kind of dying over having to even ask. Being kicked off of Circle Team probably means being kicked out of ANBU, too. 

Crow-taichō pauses. His forehead creases a little as he studies her. It’s weird that he has facial expressions. “No,” he says, slowly. “I’m apologizing to you.” 

“Oh.” Groundhog fidgets with the bag of gear she’s still got slung over one shoulder. “Um, for what, taichō? Are you even allowed to do that?” 

His lips twitch. “I’ve had a lot of captains who would have preferred that admitting a mistake to a subordinate be a illegal, but it isn’t.” 

This is why Crow-taichō is the best. She kind of just wants to _tell him_ that he’s the best, and not to worry about it, but it seems like maybe it would fester. Plus, Crow-taichō is definitely the most veteran of the veteran ANBU that have allowed themselves to be seen milling around, so if he wants to say something she should probably listen. 

“Okay,” Groundhog says. “Go for it, taichō.” 

“You almost died,” Crow-taichō says bluntly, “because I decided your approach and infiltration attempt would be a good distraction. It was a betrayal of your trust. If you want out of ANBU, or if you’d like a different captain, I’ll arrange that for you. Bear has an opening on her team; she does well with rookies.” 

She stares at him. “I had the barrier seals,” she says. “I was fine. I was never even really in danger.” 

“I forgot about the seals,” her captain admits. “When he threw that kunai, I thought you were already dead.” 

He looks sad. And exhausted. He looks like she never could have imagined Crow-taichō looking, like he’s one good blow away from breaking, and he expects her to deliver. 

Groundhog lays a hand, slow and gentle, on Crow-taichō’s shoulder. She’s never initiated contact with him before, but it feels right. “I had the seals because when I said I wanted us to take them, you agreed,” she says. “You trusted me to know what equipment I’d need and then you trusted me to do my job and not die. Apology not accepted, taichō. You’re perfect and didn’t make a mistake at all.” 

“That’ll go to my head,” Crow-taichō mutters. 

“Good,” Groundhog says. “Your head seems like it needs it. I’ll tell you you’re perfect once a week from now on, how about that? But only if you put your mask back on because it’s kinda freaking me out.” 

Crow-taichō puts his mask back on, and so does Groundhog, and all is finally right with the world. They go to stow their bags in Circle Team’s bunk room and then get a meal in the canteen, where Groundhog sits with Crow-taichō and finally gets some post-mission stories out of him. 


End file.
